Michael & Susan Dell Foundation
Global Statement on Privacy of Personal Information
Adopted: August 1, 2018
The Michael & Susan Dell Foundation (“Foundation”) is a charitable organization that funds and operates projects that improve the lives of children living in urban poverty. The Foundation operates globally, with offices in the United States, India, and South Africa. In its work, the Foundation focuses on the individual beneficiary in many different contexts – as a student, a scholarship recipient, a first-time job-seeker, a patient, or the like. However, the Foundation also recognizes the critical importance of protecting the privacy of the individual beneficiaries we seek to serve. The Foundation has adopted the following principles in furtherance of this goal.
Grantmaking and Project Funding
- As a general rule, the Foundation does not collect personally identifiable information about individual beneficiaries from the grantees, vendors, or investees we fund.
- In the infrequent circumstance in which the Foundation needs personally identifiable information about individual beneficiaries for programs analysis, all such activities are funneled to a specific data management team within the Foundation to ensure appropriate oversight of such data. This team sets parameters for secure collection, use, sharing, storage, and timely disposal of all such information once it is no longer needed.
Foundation-Operated Programs
- The Foundation regularly collects and uses personally identifiable information about individual beneficiaries to operate programs that the Foundation itself owns and/or runs, such as:
- Scholarship and bursary programs like Dell Scholars and Dell Young Leaders
- College completion tracking software services such as GradSnapp
- Scholarship application submission services such as Scholar Snapp
- Education data collection projects administered by the Foundation at the request of the South African government
- For all Foundation-operated programs, the Foundation has established data privacy policies and processes to ensure that appropriate consents are obtained for all uses and that all personally identifiable information is stored securely.
Other
- The Foundation regularly collects and uses organizational-level information about grantee, vendor, and investee entities to make grants, fund projects, and engage in other charitable activities. Such activities include facilitating payments to grantees, receiving reports from grantees, arranging site visits, and organizing convenings. The organizational-level information collected includes limited contact information about staff members at such organizations, such as names, email addresses, and phone numbers. All such personally identifiable information is stored securely.
- The Foundation regularly collects and uses limited contact information such as names, email addresses, and phone numbers, for Foundation communications purposes, such as sending out Foundation newsletters, invitations, or announcements. All such personally identifiable information is stored securely.
- From time to time, the Foundation shares stories about individual beneficiaries on its website, blogs, newsletters, or other media. The Foundation ensures that appropriate consents are obtained before publishing these stories.
Regardless of source, the Foundation never shares or sells any personally identifiable information to any other party for any commercial purpose.
The Foundation does collect, use and share aggregated, anonymized beneficiary data from grantees, vendors, or investees for programs analysis and other similar purposes.